- Born
- Died
- Birth nameUrsula Schmidt
- Gorgeous was too tame a word for this foreigner stunner. Glamorous brunette beauty Ursula Thiess was born Ursula Schmidt in Hamburg, Germany on May 15, 1924, the daughter of Hans Schmidt, who managed a printing company, and Wilhelmine Lange, her turbulent childhood including working as compulsory farm laborer on the orders of the Nazi government when the teen refused to join the paramilitary Hitler Youth Movement. She later began her entertainment career in her native homeland appearing on the stage and dubbing female voices in American films.
Married to director Georg Thieß, the couple's marriage was a relatively unhappy one and they eventually divorced. With two children (Manuela and Michael) in tow, she found work in the late 1940s/early 1950s as a fashion model in Berlin. She left postwar Germany at the urging of Howard Hughes and signed up with his RKO company for film representation.
Billed as "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" during her initial build-up, her debut movie was as a mixed-race English/Indian girl in the outdoor drama Monsoon (1952) opposite the handsome, frequently bare-chested George Nader. While she failed to weave the same kind of foreign magic as that of Marlene Dietrich, she was far more beautiful and was voted "Most Promising Star of 1952" by Modern Screen Magazine and a Golden Globe the next year. This exotic temptation remained a fetching distraction amid the rugged scenery where, percentage-wise, the story and action remained strongly focused on her handsome he-man co-stars: Robert Stack in The Iron Glove (1954); Rock Hudson in Bengal Brigade (1954); and Glenn Ford in The Americano (1955); Robert Mitchum in Bandido! (1956), among others. Her Hollywood career wound up very short but sweet.
During her brief peak, Ursula met and eventually married the exceedingly handsome film star Robert Taylor (in 1954) and she subsequently abandoned her film career. Outside of her two children by her first marriage, Ursula had two more children (Terrance in 1955 and Tessa in 1959), by Taylor. Though she seemed quite content to be out of the limelight, she did appear with some regularity on her husband's TV series The Detectives (1959) during its first season, playing a police reporter who has a brief affair with Taylor's character. While raising her children was her prime job, she also became an active volunteer at a children's hospital.
Following her son Michael's tragic suicide from a drug overdose and husband Taylor's death shortly thereafter from lung cancer, both in 1969, Ursula was glimpsed here and there in a light sprinkling of film and TV appearances before bowing out completely. Her last film was the completely overlooked [error] with Richard Egan and Ian McShane.
Surviving an operation for a benign brain tumor in 1979, the former actress married wealthily for a third time and lived in Hawaii during part of that marriage, but would find herself widowed again in 1987 after 12 years. Known to be an excellent home decorator and gourmet cook, she eventually wrote an autobiography entitled "But I Have Promises to Keep" in 2003. Living in the Los Angeles area for the remainder of her life, she eventually entered an assisted facility in Burbank and died on June 19, 2010, at the age of 86, survived by her three remaining children.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
- SpousesMarshall Schacker(1973 - 1986) (his death)Robert Taylor(May 24, 1954 - June 8, 1969) (his death, 2 children)Georg Thieß(1942 - 1947) (divorced, 2 children)
- Her son, Michael, spent a year in jail for trying to poison his father. He committed suicide by overdose in a motel at the age of 24. She found his body.
- When she was 12 years old in Germany she went to a movie theater and saw Camille (1936) and, she said, "swooned" when she saw Robert Taylor. Eighteen years later she married him.
- Her husband died less than two weeks after 5/26.69 when she found her son Michael's dead body.
- While handsome Robert Taylor was squiring her about town, the press quipped that he was *finally* dating someone prettier than he was (Taylor was previously married to Barbara Stanwyck).
- She was widowed twice. Her second husband, Robert Taylor, and her third husband both died of lung cancer.
- [on Monsoon (1952)] My leading man was George Nader, and it was directed by Rod Amateau, who become a lifelong friend. Ellen Corby, later to gain fame as Granny Walton [on the TV series The Waltons (1972)], was also in the cast, as was the marvelous character actor Myron Healey, who always had a camera in hand, taking pictures of everything imaginable.
- I was flown over here and put up at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. They let me use my legal name at the time, Ursual Thiess. Thiess was my ex-husband's [Georg Thieß] name. He was mean and brutal.
- I was in Germany during the war. The Nazis knew how I felt about them; I was considered a traitor so I tried to keep out of sight as much as possible.
- Modern Screen voted me 1952's Most Promising Star - as they also did for Marilyn Monroe. That same year, I received the Golden Key Award from the Foreign Press Association, whose ceremony I helped to host. And in 1953, I received the Golden Globe Award.
- [on Bengal Brigade (1954)] Rock Hudson was the star, and the other female lead was titian-haired Arlene Dahl, whose looks were a contrast to my dark hair and make-up. Arlene's dressing room was next to mine, and I heard her say, in an agitated voice, "If I'd known that woman was in the cast, I never would have signed the contract!" When I confronted our mutual agent, he said, "Don't worry about it. It's just professional jealousy. You're just too pretty to share the screen with". As for Rock, he was a sensitive, cooperative young man, ready to give a helping hand. He showed, like [Robert Taylor], a great admiration for character actors, possibly feeling trapped in his good looks. I appreciated his ever-present gallantry.
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